Higher education, especially in emerging markets, is often characterized by high student-to-instructor ratios. These high student-to-instructor ratios translate to a very low level of student and instructor interaction. Consequently, there is a time-fairness trade-off in the assessment of student participation and involvement.
Virtual Learning environments (VLCs), and specifically conversational cyberspaces, have the potential to increase the level of interaction between and among students, especially with regard to each other. Such conversational cyberspaces can also facilitate interactions between students and their instructors. However, the extra burden that would be placed upon instructors by their adoption of conventional VLCs acts as a barrier to the introduction of these tools.
The greatest impact of the burden that would result from the adoption of VLCs into secondary education classrooms probably falls upon professors of relatively larger class sizes. However, this burden also slows VLC adoption in classes of relatively smaller sizes. Moreover, the monitoring of participation and involvement in conversational cyberspaces generally presents a burden for a moderator even in environments outside those of education.